bathing beauty

American  

[bey-thing] / ˈbeɪ ðɪŋ /

noun

1. an attractive woman in a bathing suit, especially an entrant in a beauty contest.

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bathing beauty British  

/ ˈbeɪðɪŋ /

noun

1. Also called (old-fashioned): bathing belle.  an attractive girl in a swimming costume

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Etymology

Origin of bathing beauty

First recorded in 1915–20

Example Sentences

MGM hired her a day later for a brief role in “Bathing Beauty” — she spoke two lines in the film, which starred Esther Williams and Red Skelton — then dropped her.

From Seattle Times

I’m a bathing beauty and an ex-Broadway showgirl, so I like to soak in the bath with Epsom salt.

From New York Times

Nicholaw gave us a five-minute high-speed chase ballet that was clearly a tribute to Jerome Robbins’s “Bathing Beauty” number in “High Button Shoes,” from 1947.

From New York Times

His mother was a onetime Mack Sennett “Bathing Beauty” who became a body double for silent-movie star Clara Bow and, briefly, a stuntwoman in westerns.

From Washington Post

This isn’t a bathing beauty, such as Picasso would have seen in paintings by Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. but a woman caught in the all-too-human awkwardness of trying to bathe a body in a shallow tub in a crummy bedroom.

From New York Times